2025, a Heavenly year:

A lot happened in 2025, so let's go through it step by step in order.  First off, what was the anime scene like?

2025 Year in Anime Reviewed:


How did 2025's great franchises stack up against each other and what were they?

1.  Summer Pockets

2.  Spy x Family S3

3.  Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Jou 1

4.  Ao no Hako (2nd cour)

5.  DanMachi S5 (remainder)

6.  Koujo Denka no Kateikyoushi

7.  Who Made me a Princess?

8.  Wonderful Precure (ending) + Kimi to Idol Precure

9.  Uma Musume Cinderella Gray

10.  Boku no Hero Academia Final

11.  Ave Mujica S1

12.  One Piece (Egghead arc continued)

13.  100 Kanojo S2

14.  Grisaia Phantom Trigger tv season

15.  Love Live! Nijigasaki movie 1 (finally translated)

16.  Fairy Tail 100 Year Quest (final episode)

17.  Oomuro-ke Dear Friends oav (finally translated)

18.  Idolm@ster Shiny Colors oav

This was a dreadful year.  The 18 entries hides how little actually came out this year.  Many of those 18 were single episodes, or just a few episodes long.  The Kimetsu movie ordinarily would have been counted for next year when it came out in bluray.  I only counted it for this year this time because I saw it in theater.  When a series was longer, it tended to be a spinoff of the actually great franchise and be of little worth itself.  If you add all the problems together this was the worst year in anime of the 21st century.

In addition, there were a number of good but not great series that came out worth watching:

Class no Daikirai na Joshi to Kekkon suru Koto ni Natta

Medalist

Around 40 Otoko no Isekai Tsuuhan

Hana wa Saku, Shura no Gotoku

Hamidashi Creative

Boku no Hero Academia Vigilantes

Catch me at the Ballpark

I'm the evil lord of a galactic empire

Ruri no Houseki

Outcast's Restaurant

Watanare

Tsuyukote New Saga

The Assassin's Status Exceeds the Hero's

Egao no Taenai Shokuba desu

Add to that sequels of good anime from previous years like Nageki Bourei S2 or Gundam GQuuux and you have the full list.  No matter how you look at it the offering is skimpy.  To make up for it I rewatched a lot of great anime from the past, including the great anime of 2024, the works of Mitsuru Adachi, the works of Jun Maeda, the rest of Pretty Cure that I hadn't rewatched last year, One Piece in its new condensed form, etc.  I got in plenty of anime despite 2025 dropping the ball.

Because I rewatched Futari wa Precure Max Heart, I was able to add a new Honoka section to '100 Waifus,' who previously had been almost completely ignored.  It isn't the best section of the book but it's better than the previous nothing.  It fulfilled the implicit promise of the story which was a romantic moment with all 100 waifus listed in the opening chapter, which is what makes its addition so important.  I also did a few other minor edits that lasted all the way to this October, but now the book is really, truly done.  The 50th edition did the trick.  Every time I reread '100 Waifus' this year I massively enjoyed it.  The more I got to read without having to stop and edit the better the experience became.

Unlike previous years, '100 Waifus' did not dominate 2025 though.  The biggest monopoly on my time was definitely Heaven Burns Red.  I've discussed Heaven throughout the year so there's no need to belabor it again.  Suffice to say it's the best game ever made, and the second longest game I've ever played (second only to World of Warcraft.)  Between the quality of the plot and characters that keeps making me cry over and over and the quantity of endless dungeon runs and level grinds and recruitment drives, Heaven has taken up a unique place in my heart.  Heaven Burns Red now hosts more wonderful fictional characters than any other continuous story (Final Fantasy, for instance, is the same brand but the characters from the various games are all from completely disconnected worlds.)

Speaking of, a large portion of this year was dedicated to the Fictional Character Hall of Fame, or in short, the wonderful hall of fame.  There are 1405 wonderful characters so far, and each of them was given a dedicated wonderful theme song from my music hall of fame that suited them best.  This created the wonderful playlist, which I listen to all the time, creating long term dividends for my efforts.  Before this year began there were only 1100 wonderful characters, but over the course of the year I expanded and refined my list to the bigger and better 1405.  A lot of those great characters I dredged up from my past life experiences, but many I actually got to know over the course of this year:

Nanami and Chisaki from Riddle Joker.

Noa, Amane and Kurumi from Tenshi Souzou Reboot.

Nozomi, Kanna and Suzune from Cafe Stella.

Shizuru from Noble Works.

Sana from Tenshin Ranman.

Anju, Tsukimi and Miku from Limelight Lemonade Jam.

These all came from the Yuzusoft visual novels I've been binging all year.  They're all incredibly beautiful, sweet girls, but Nanami and Sana take the cake.  I experienced so many romances this year with the best girls ever imagined, all thanks to a single prolific company that never lets me down, and translators who actually translate -- unlike, say, Da Capo 4, or Kud Wafter, which is still only in Japanese.

As mentioned before, I've gotten to know the entire cast of Heaven Burns Red over the year, so that's 34 more wonderful girls:

34 Heaven Burns Red: Tama, Megumi, Ruka, Karen, Tsukasa, Yuki, Sumomo, Ichigo, Kozue, Erika, Bon Ivar, Mari, Adelheid, Misato, Akari, Risa, Ichiko, Niina, Minori, Isuzu, Muua, Chiroru, Inori, Carole, Charlotta, Yingxia, Vritika, Jamie, Rumi, Nanami, Saki, Yuina, Miya and Hisame.

Then there's Kokoro and Uta from Kimi to Idol Precure.  Athanasia from Who Made me a Princess?  Iroha from Yumeka Utsutsuka.  Belno from Cinderella Gray.  Shina and Meru from 100 Girlfriends.  The four heroines from Senmomo:  Kotone, Elsa, Tsukisome no Himemiko and Kanami.  The three heroines from Koujo Denka:  Tina, Ellie and Lynne.  Inori and Hikaru from Medalist.  Sawa and Yuuma from Demons Crest.  Juani, Will and Gallica from Metaphor ReFantazio.  Yurie from The Teen Web Novelist is a Girl Magnet.  Ruriko from Catch me at the Ballpark.  Frey from Dead Rock.  Valya from Dune: Prophecy.  And Annie/Hallie from The Parent Trap (1998).  73 new great fictional characters in all, 71 of them girls.  ^_^.

Most of these girls were not only admirable but also quality romantic interests.  So it's like I had a new girlfriend every week.  Even better, I got to condense a lifetime of romantic experiences with said girlfriend every week.  So I got all the best moments of a romance with them, instead of all the boring and troublesome parts, and then moved on to the best moments of a romance with another.  That's what happens when you lean so deeply into visual novels all year long.  It's hard to imagine any real life girl being able to give that kind of experience no matter how hard she tried or how much she loved me.  It's hard to imagine how Nanami, Sana, and the other 69 girls I got to know this year could possibly have been bested.  Plus all these girls came with a bonus music hall of fame theme song -- girls in real life don't come with personal theme songs you can listen to raptly hundreds of times on repeat.

I added at least 50 songs to my music hall of fame (subtracting an equal number of duds to make room), almost all of them high-ranking.  This was mainly thanks to Heaven Burns Red, Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest, and Metaphor: ReFantazio.  But perhaps more important than the additions was the rerating of all 5500 of my songs.  Hundreds of songs were flipped to a new tier, including a great many into the vital 5-star tier.  It took a lot of effort to listen to all 5500 songs and judge them anew but the reward is a better playlist to listen to for the rest of my life, and better theme songs to adorn my favored fictional few.  Most amazingly, I kept all five tiers even at 1100 a piece, continuing to grade things fairly on a curve.

This summer saw the release of a new Magic: The Gathering set based around the Final Fantasy franchise.  I've never enjoyed Magic more, and nearly doubled the number of decks I own in order to accommodate all these wonderful new cards I wanted to play with.  My favorite new FF-themed deck features the summoners Rydia, Terra, Garnet and Yuna and their summons, which they can continuously recur from the graveyard.  But there were dozens of other decks I lovingly crafted out of FF lore and played for hundreds of matches.  Many of the magic cards featured waifus from '100 Waifus,' so I bought their expensive full-anime portrait collectors' versions.  (My waifus deserve only the best.)  Every time I see them in their full beauty while playing my spirit is charged that little bit more.

The thousands of dollars I've spent on Heaven Burns Red and Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy are drops in the bucket compared to the profits I made this year on the stock market.  I sold my stocks and switched to bonds for the sake of security, but the magnificent returns I received before then allowed me to splurge on entertainment like never before.  As a result I was more entertained this year than any other.  Money really does buy happiness.

As for books, I read a few new volumes of Xanth, Index, Parchment & Wolf, SAOAGGO, SAO, The Red Wheel and Grimgar.  The Red Wheel was the only literature that stood out, the rest were forgettable.  Not bad or anything, but they did little to improve their franchises as a whole.  The best book I read this year was '100 Waifus,' like always.

Manga was decent this year but nothing major.  We got to see Akatsuki no Yona limp to its finish.  We got to see Oguri Cap race to her finish.  Cuckoo no Iinazuke had a whirlwind of exciting developments that somehow still managed to maintain the status quo.  Yumeka Utsutsuka started, but if I had the choice I'd rather be reading Io Sakisaka's previous work, 'Sakura, Saku.'  Vinland Saga ceased being interesting when it stopped talking about the Norse and went to live with the Indians, so the ending had so little impact I'd forgotten it even happened.

There were two great American movies I discovered this year -- 'Tetris' (which is set in Japan and Russia, not America, and a true story.)  And 'The Parent Trap (1998)' (which is based off of a German novel, not an American work.)  So it's a stretch to say America produced anything worthwhile.

The Last of Us S2 was a good tv show, but it's based off of a Japanese game.  Dune: Prophecy was good, but it's based off of a novel written in the 1960's.  And so on.  The best entertainment America produced this year was its football season.  Unlike next year, there was no World Cup or Olympics to liven things up.

Senmomo was great mainly because of its lavish art and animation depicting a society much like ancient Japan.  Everyone was clothed in such complex, beautiful, gaudy formal garb, it was mesmerizing before the plot even started.  I also got to enjoy Konozora: Snow Presents and Rewrite: Harvest Festa this year.  I got to love Hasumi a little more with Koikari After Hours.  Akai Hitomi let me flirt with Shinku some more and have a daughter with her.  Sequels to old visual novels also matter, so long as they're as great as their predecessors.  I also read the Hatsuyuki Sakura visual novel, but the only good thing about that was its beautiful girls.

Lunar Remastered was definitely fun, but I'd already played it before.  Ditto for Tales of Graces Remastered.  Dynasty Warriors: Origins is yet another remake of the same game that's been coming out for decades.  The only real 'innovation' of this version of the game is that it stops halfway through the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, instead of covering the full novel like the previous games had.  Phantom Brave Lost Hero wasn't fun, it was a miserable chore from start to finish.  If you count Heaven Burns Red as a game, as opposed to a visual novel, I had a rich gaming experience all year.  But if you don't, the only game I actually cared about was Metaphor ReFantazio.  What a fantastic plot.  I didn't like the characters as much as the ones from Fire Emblem, Unicorn Overlord, Final Fantasy or Tales, but that plot could compete with any of them.

Over the course of the year Russia has taken Pokrovsk, Myrnograd, Siversk, Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Gulaypole and Volchansk, as well as many smaller villages.  They still need to take Kupiansk, and their hold on Chasiv Yar is more tenuous than I would desire, but technically Russia is now at 4/5 of the way to winning the war.  All that's left is to take Kupiansk and Ukraine should give up, having no fortified cities left to hide behind.  Kupiansk is already being fought over, so it shouldn't be long now.  I thought Ukraine would surrender this year, but they managed to drag things out a bit longer.  I expect Ukraine will surrender in 2026 instead.

For some reason Blogger started censoring my posts and threatening to shut down my blog (something I've poured decades of my life into) whenever I said the least provocative thing.  As a result I've been effectively muzzled.  I don't want to lose the archive of thousands of articles that people can still read, or the convenience of being able to constantly update my permaposts promoting my favorite music, books, anime and games.  So I've ceased being a political commentator as a matter of necessity, despite having strong opinions on all the political topics of the day.  It's a shame, but my blog has garnered a million views already, so it's served its purpose as a political influencer well enough.  All I can do now is try to preserve it by meekly obeying the censors from here.  One era of my life closes (like how I spent the last seven years editing '100 Waifus,'), and another begins.